Sunday, March 28, 2010

CC: Hobbs Coffee

Despite traversing Philadelphia so many times, there always seems to be a distant suburb of it that I have to unearth. My latest strike is the cute, college town of Swarthmore. A little bit off my route one day, I stumbled upon a new coffeehouse that had popped up on the main street. Titled Hobbs Coffee, it looked promising from what I could decipher and with a little bit of a weird means (my GPS likes to take scenic tours), I finally found my way.

Hobbs sits in a corner shop right next to the Septa train stop with nice, open windows. The inner domain consisted of a very open space with nice wood floors, a comfortable arrangement of furniture and decent lighting.

The coffee comes from local Chestnut Hill Coffee Company, a good operation putting forth good coffee. I had the Rwandan that fateful day, a drip that fared a tad darker then I would like but still displayed decent flavors of strawberry jam as well as a complimenting nuttiness and earthiness. The espresso, pulled short with good crema, had the qualities of lemon, sugar cane, bits of bitter cocoa and some milky molasses on the end. The tea is Equal Exchange.

Though I wasn't a gargantuan fan of the Rwandan (too dark for me) or that they wouldn't serve a bagel after breakfast hours (why put a time limit on something that has a shelf life?), Hobbs showed a pretty high level of quality (at the least) with their espresso and choice of coffee roaster. With a few little improvements, they have potential to really be top notch.